


Honey, I'm Home

by musiclvr1112



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Angst, Best Friends, Blatantly ignores season 2, Couch Cuddles, Cuddling & Snuggling, Explicit Language, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Home for Christmas, Meet the Family, Morning Cuddles, Nath has zero chill, Pining Nath, Platonic Cuddling, Queen Bee, Queen Bee's identity is a secret, SO MUCH FLUFF, Sexual innuendos, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Burn, Tooth Rotting Fluff, ZERO CHILL, did you know there were that many different cuddling tags because i didn't, like a lot of sexual innuendos, what's an updating schedule?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-01-06 01:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 20,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12201630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclvr1112/pseuds/musiclvr1112
Summary: When Chloé doesn't want to face her mother's family alone again this holiday season, she drags Nathanaël along under the guise that he's her boyfriend. It's been done a million times, and he knows the way it generally goes. Is it wrong of him to wish that it goes that way for them too?





	1. Honey/Tomato

**Author's Note:**

> This is in pieces and it will forever be in pieces. It will also never have an updating schedule, and who knows if it will ever even resolve/do anything with its life. I'm just gonna be revisiting it on occasion when I feel like it/when people ask for it.
> 
> Enjoy! <3

“What about Honey?”

“What _about_ honey?” Chloé responded through gritted teeth, taking a brief moment to glare at him out of the corner of her eye. Less than a second later her eyes were on the road again and Nathanaël was thankful she was at least a good driver. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t been extremely hesitant to get in a car with Chloé Bourgeois behind the wheel, but his mind had quickly been set at ease when he’d realized she wasn’t an absolute maniac on the road.

“Oh come on,” he said, “that’s a pretty common pet name.”

“That doesn’t make it any good! It’s so _sappy_ and _sticky_ and _gross_!”

“As a pet name or a food?”

“Both!”

He hummed in thought as he watched cars go by them, noting somewhere in the back of his head that Chloé didn’t even speed ( _hah, what a nerd_ ). “But Honey suits you.”

“Why?”

“Because of your hair.” She briefly turned to give him a look that reminded him of the time she had tried marmite.

“What, so I should call you Tomato?”

He gave her a deadpan expression, not that she could see it. “No,” he replied flatly, “because that’s already our lycée class’s pet name for me.”

She half-heartedly tried to cover up her laugh. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” He wanted to glare at her, but he couldn’t exactly be mad when she looked so cute smiling like that. And after she’d been so incredibly tense all day too. It was refreshing. “I don’t get it, though,” she continued. “Why do we even need pet names?”

“How am I supposed to convince your family that we’re dating if we don’t even have pet names?”

“Having pet names isn’t some sort of relationship requirement, Nath.”

“Of course it is! Pet names are one of the best parts of dating!” She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t miss the tiny smile in the corner of her mouth.

“What about kissing and hugging and love and support?” She glanced nervously at him when he didn’t respond. “W-What?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t say sex.”

“What!?”

“Don’t tell me you’re actually a romantic at heart,” he said, chuckling. Her head sank down into her shoulders, a deep blush taking to her cheeks. “Oh my gosh, you are.”

“Shut up,” she muttered bitterly. He just laughed.

“That makes it even more surprising that you don’t like pet names though! Especially with all those different names you used to give Adrien. Let me think,” he counted off on his fingers, “Adrikins, Adrisweets, Adrifl—,”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” she interrupted. “Look, that’s exactly why I don’t like them, okay?”

“Because of Adrien?”

“No! Well, yes.” She sighed. “Because that was all so fake and impersonal. Back then I had no idea what love was, and I acted so disgustingly toward him because of it. I like to think I’ve moved on from all that now.”

Nathanaël hummed in thought. “Fair enough. We don’t need to use any pet names. But speaking of kissing and hugging,” he was pretty sure he saw her twitch just the slightest bit, “how much of a show do you want me to be putting on?”

She bit her lip and he wasn’t sure if it was a product of being nervous or just careful deliberation. He should probably stop overthinking every little move she made. “Well, holding my hand every now and then would be good, and probably hugging. You’ve dated before, right?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Yeah, so, you know, whatever seems natural? Don’t overdo it. I might kiss your cheek here and there, are you alright with that?”

_Hell yes_. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Okay. And as far as kissing on the lips goes…” he swallowed nervously, wondering if it was wrong of him to be hoping for her to say he should kiss her often, “we might need to for a picture or two. But other than that, it shouldn’t be necessary. I mean… Well, my Aunt Georgia watches a lot of Hallmark movies and she might ask us to kiss or something. She’s kind of gross like that. Is that… Are you comfortable with that?” she asked, eyeing him nervously.

_You could hold me down and cover me in hickies and I would beg for more_ —He cleared his throat, hoping it might clear his head too. It didn’t. “Yeah, that’s totally fine.” He thought for a moment, then smirked as the Hallmark comment caught up with him.  “Do you realize how freaking tropy this is?”

“Tropy?”

“Yeah. You know, asking me to visit your family with you for the holidays to pretend to be your boyfriend? There are at least three fics of this in any given fandom.”

She side eyed him with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “Nerd.”

“True, and not the point.”

She rolled her eyes, still smiling. “It’s only tropy if we fall in love by the end.”

He found himself very glad in that moment that she wasn’t looking at him and therefore couldn’t see the sudden blush that he knew had appeared on his face. “Haha, yeah, true.” He nervously scratched the back of his head and stared at her. She didn’t seem to be having any sort of reaction to it and he wondered if his feelings really were one-sided. “Hey, Chloé…”

“Hm?”

“Why did you ask me to come and not Adrien or something?”

“Adrien already had holiday plans,” she stated plainly. His heart sunk.

“O-Oh. Gotcha.”

“Plus, all of France already knows he’s dating Marinette.”

“Right, of course.”

“And besides,” she shrugged, “I trust you.”

His heart thumped in his chest and he could feel that blush returning just as it had begun to calm down. “W-What?”

“You’ve been keeping my identity as Queen Bee a secret for, what? Two years now? I’ve seen you lie with ease a million times, and you’ve more than proven that I can trust you. Plus, second to Sabrina, you’re kind of my best friend at this point. Honestly, I would rather face my family alone again than bring home anyone else.”

He reminded himself not to take her words as any sort of sign that she reciprocated his feelings.

But that didn’t mean that he had to ignore the warmth that he felt because of her, right? He didn’t want to deny himself this glow of love and appreciation that he felt from her. Even if the way she felt toward him was different than what he felt for her, it was still something special and he could at least take joy in that.

She glanced at him after he didn’t respond for a while. “What?” He smiled and she rolled her eyes, cheeks taking on the slightest dusting of blush. “So I said some nice words about you, don’t let it go to your head.”

He laughed. “Yes, _Honey_.”


	2. Christmas Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst.

“Hey, Nath?”

“Oh thank goodness,” he breathed, letting out a heavy sigh. Nathanaël turned onto his side so that he was facing her. “What’s up?”

“What? What was the ‘thank goodness’ for?” she asked as she turned too. The Christmas lights hanging along the outside of the house shined in through the window, vaguely lighting her in soft rainbow light, and he thanked whatever deity had granted him access to such a beautiful sight. Her blue eyes caught the light perfectly, practically glowing in the dark room as she looked over at him.

“I’ve been staring at the ceiling ever since we turned off the light, wide awake. It was driving me insane. I’m so glad you said something, otherwise I would’ve been trapped in my thoughts all night.”

She smiled at him then, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and he realized she probably had some not-so-enjoyable thoughts on her mind. He was about to ask what was wrong, but she spoke first. “Are your thoughts such a terrible place to be?”

_When I’ve been holding your hand all day as you introduce me to your mother’s family as your boyfriend? When earlier today you kissed me full on the lips and it was one of the single most amazing things I’ve ever felt?? When now after all of that you’re lying here in the same bed as me looking outright sinful in a mere undershirt and pajama shorts and I have to remind myself that you and I are not in fact dating???_

“Yeah,” he replied, “they can be pretty hard to deal with sometimes.” _~~Emphasis on the **hard**~~ HOLY SHIT NATHANA_ _ËL SHUT UP._

Chloé frowned. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot you’re used to a semi-nocturnal lifestyle. If you want, you can stay up and draw for a while. I won’t mind.”

He smiled at her, warmed from the inside out by her consideration. He knew she was actually a really light sleeper, and if he had even a small desk lamp on to draw, she would be left wide awake until he stopped.

“Thanks, Chlo, but I’m alright,” he said. He noticed a few strands of hair hanging in her glowing, sad eyes. Never one to keep his romantic impulses at bay, he reached out and gently tucked those strands back behind her ear, taking simple pleasure in the silky texture of her hair and the gentle sigh the action drew out of her. “What’s wrong?”

She stared at him with pursed lips as she formed the question on her tongue. He noted the movement of her jaw, betraying the fact that she was grinding her teeth again, a bad habit that she had whenever she was thinking intensely about something. He reached his hand out again to rest his fingers against her jaw. “Your dentist will complain if you keep doing that.” She immediately stopped and gave him a tiny smile. He let his hand linger just a second longer, indulging in the smallest of touches, before he dropped it to rest in the space between them.

“Have you ever had any really bad fights with either of your mothers?” she finally asked. He hummed, chewing the inside of his cheek in thought.

“I definitely have at some point. No one’s relationship with their parents is perfect. Mum and I used to butt heads a lot when I was a teenager, getting into really heated arguments over really silly things, like our favorite comic book characters. But Maman is such a peacemaker that nothing was ever allowed to fester. She kind of forced us to have an open, communicative household. So even when things were bad, they would never stay that way for long. I think the worst time was when Mum tried to get me to think about getting a backup degree in something other than art. Eighteen-year-old-Nathanaël took that to mean she didn’t have faith in my art ability being good enough to support myself with, and well… Needless to say, it was bad. Even at full peacemaking abilities, Maman couldn’t smooth that one over very easily. Mum and I didn’t talk to each other for almost a week because of it. Any time she tried to talk to me about it, I would leave the room. Maman eventually locked us in a room together and refused to let us out until we made up.” He chuckled then, and he noted that he’d managed to coax a tiny giggle out of Chloé, the sound twinkling over his ear like early morning wind chimes.

“That sounds like Lorraine,” she said.

“Yeah,” he affirmed. “She even sat outside the door and listened to the whole conversation, occasionally chiming in whenever we went off course.” Chloé’s laughter grew then, and he smiled as he saw it reach her eyes. If he did nothing else that night, he could at least pride himself in making her smile. “But that’s pretty much the worst it ever got. Relatively speaking, I think I’ve always had a pretty great relationship with my parents.” Her expression clouded again as she hummed in thought. “Why do you ask?” She started grinding her teeth again, so he gently stopped her with a hand to her cheek. Rather than remove it completely, he elected to stroke her hair softly in a comforting motion. “Nervous about seeing your mother tomorrow?” She nodded, expression weighed down by sad eyes. “How long has it been?”

She let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes, seeming to sink into his touch. “I mean, I technically saw her last Christmas too, but we don’t talk. We exchange pleasantries and we hug exactly twice—once when we first see each other and once when we leave—and we exchange meaningless formality Christmas gifts, and that’s it.” She grimaced in frustration, voice picking up more and more anger as she went on. “Ever since she left Papa and I, we haven’t talked. She’s never apologized for leaving an eight year old with no mother and a heartbroken father, she’s never expressed any desire to know about me or my life—she may as well be some estranged cousin for all she cares about my life. Except that’s not even accurate, because my cousins and their incessant questions about my life and my relationships are the reason you’re here. They may be annoying, but at least they seem to give a shit about me and my life.” His heart sunk as he watched the first tear fall, quickly followed by more and more of them. “ She’s my _mother_ , why doesn’t she care if my business is going well or if I’m seeing someone or how my Papa is doing?” Her voice broke then, and she brought up her hands to shield her face from view. “Why doesn’t she _care_?”

Unable to watch anymore, Nathanaël moved forward, pulling her into his arms. Her body shook with sobs, but she curled into him nonetheless, bunching up the fabric of his t-shirt in her fists and tangling her legs with his. He enclosed her in his arms and ran a hand over her hair, just trying to soothe her as best he could. He knew there was nothing he could say to make her feel better. What she needed in that moment was a shoulder to cry on. So that’s what he was. A shoulder to cry on until she fell asleep, nestled safely in his arms.


	3. Your Highness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buzz buzz.

 

“So how did you two meet?”

Nathanaël looked up from the sugar cookie he was decorating, pulled from his own thoughts by the previously silent woman across the table from him. Her disposition showed no change, blue eyes still passive and completely focused on her own sugar cookie. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought the question had merely appeared out of thin air.

Then those sharp blue orbs glanced up at him, slightly agitated, no doubt because he was taking so long to respond.

“U-Um…” he cleared his throat, centering himself. “We went to school together.”

“So what changed?” He stared at her like an idiot, waiting for some sort of explanation. None came.

“I’m sorry?”

“What changed?” she repeated, annoyance clear in her tone.

“What do you mean?”

“You went to school together, but you didn’t start dating until this year, and Chloé hasn’t been in school for three years, so what changed?”

Nathanaël gulped nervously, a strange (and quite unwelcomed) sense of nostalgia falling over him. If he thought Chloé was intimidating back in school, her mother was something else altogether.

“Well?” Fuck. What should he say? The thing that changed was…

 

_He was out of breath and his legs were screaming to stop, but Nathana_ _ël kept running as fast as he could. He might die. He was pretty sure he could taste blood, probably from running his throat ragged. He really wasn’t the athletic type, and running killed him the most. But it didn’t matter. He had to find her._

_He rounded the corner where he saw her fall—where he saw_ Queen Bee _fall—after taking a nasty blow from that day’s akuma. He had noted some scratches and bruises on Chloé over the past few weeks that she did her best to cover up. He knew no one else would notice them since no one else paid such close attention to her, knowing who she was. But he knew. He knew that Ladybug’s cure didn’t fix_ everything _._

_And he knew that she had taken a really big hit._

_Down at the end of the allyway, he spotted her, signature bright yellow sweater dingy with a coating of dust, and usually pristine ponytail loose and betrayed by stray hairs. She supported her weight with a hand on the wall next to her, and staggered as she tried to take a step, sunglasses clattering to the ground. “Chloé!” he shouted upon approach, picking up speed as adrenaline kicked in._

_Terrified blue eyes snapped up to him, only to filled with anger when they recognized who it was. “Oh jeez, really!? Can you do me a favor and_ leave _? Your company is less than desired right now.”_

_“Chloé, you’re hurt,” he argued._

_“Wow, thanks for noticing. How could you tell? Must be that artistic eye for detail. Buzz off, tomato.”_

_“What I mean is you’re hurt. Let me help you.”_

_“I don’t need your help, Kurtzberg, I need you to leave me alone.” She tried to take another step, and stumbled to the ground, hissing as her already-scraped skin made contact with the concrete._

_He kneeled down and picked up her sunglasses, offering them to her. “Oh yeah, I can tell you’re doing just great on your own.” Her only response was to send him a nasty glare and snatch the glasses away, dropping them in her purse. He sighed and forced himself to soften his tone, knowing that she needed help in that moment more than he needed to bite back at her sarcasm. “Look, just let me carry you to the hospital. If you try to limp there, you’re only going to make it worse.”_

_“Please, I’ll just call my…” she plucked out her cell phone and tapped the home button. Then tapped it again. Then pressed it repeatedly. Dead. “…driver.”_

_Nathana_ _ël fished his own phone out from his pocket. “Want to use mine?”_

_She stared at his phone, then pressed her lips together in what he would later describe as stubborn shame. “I don’t know his number.”_

_“Then it’s settled,” he said, putting his phone away again. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”_

_“How do you even expect to carry me, being the shrimp that you are? I’m like a whole head taller than you!”_

_“Excuse me, you are only a few centimeters taller than me. And I am completely capable of giving you a piggyback ride.”_

_“Please, you’ll just drop me half way there.”_

_“Do you have a better idea?”_

_Stubborn shame._

_“Chloé, just let the boy help you,” a small voice chimed. The bee-creature floated out from her purse to put a comforting hand on Chloé’s head. He had only seen the bee-creature once before, and he couldn’t imagine ever getting used to its glossy reflective eyes._

_Her eyes pleaded with the bee, but those unyielding orbs held their ground. Finally, the blonde dropped her head with a grumbling sigh._

_“Fine, but you’d better not drop me.”_

_“No promises,” he quipped, turning around so she could crawl onto his back. She flicked him right at the nape of his neck. “Okay, I deserved that.”_

_“Yes you did,” the bee-thing twinkled. Then it flitted back into hiding as he stood up, heaving the blonde bully/superhero up with him._

_After he took a few steps, Chloé slumped down onto him, resting her head on his shoulder. He chewed on the inside of his cheek worriedly, knowing that if Chloé Bourgeois was tired enough to be resting at ease with_ him _, she really must have taken quite the beating. “This isn’t the first time this has happened, is it?”_

_She hesitated. “…No,” she admitted. “It’s never been this bad before though. Usually just scratches and bruises.”_

_“Does anyone else know who you are? Ladybug and Chat Noir? Sabrina?”_

_“No, just you.”_

_He chewed some more, mulling over his thoughts. “Chloé, in the future… How about you call me when this happens. And I can come help you.”_

_“Oh please, I’m not some damsel in distress.”_

_“No. You’re not. You’re the hero saving the damsels in distress. And…sometimes heroes need help too.”_

_She didn’t say anything for a few moments, the only sound between them being that of his shoes on the pavement._

_“You…haven’t told anyone…have you?” The question wasn’t phrased so much as a question as it was a confirmation of a fact that she already knew._

_“No, I haven’t.”_

_“Thank you,” she whispered, so quietly that he might not have heard it had her mouth not been right next to his ear._

_“I know our relationship isn’t exactly…good,” she huffed a small laugh of agreement, “but I wouldn’t do that to you. You’re secret is safe, Chloé.”_

_She sighed. “You know, you’re not that bad, Red.”_

_“Wow. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Chloé.”_

_“Don’t let it go to your head. I still don’t like you.”_

_He smiled. “And I still don’t like you.”_

_“But… I guess if you_ wanted _to help me in the future, I can’t_ really _stop you.”_

_He chuckled at how stubborn she was, even when accepting his offer to help. “Yes, your highness.”_

_“Ooh,_ your highness _,” she repeated. “I could get used to that.”_

_“Don’t.”_

 

…Nathanaël shrugged. “I guess… Once we got past our differences, we just sort of…clicked.”

He looked up to find icy blue eyes narrowed at him inquisitively, thoroughly chilling him from the inside out.

“Do you love my daughter?”

He didn’t even have to think. “Yeah, I do.”

Her expression then was completely unreadable as she watched him for several moments, almost as if she was testing his gaze. But he was resolute, his gaze steady.

“Good,” she finally said. And then she went back to frosting cookies.


	4. Thank You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can tell when tomatoes are ripe by their color.

Was painting her under the glow of the rainbow Christmas lights too much?

Well, okay, rephrase. Was _giving_ her a painting of herself under the glow of the rainbow Christmas lights too much? Because, if he was being honest, there was a very slim chance that he wouldn’t paint it anyway. The question was whether that would be a gift that she would appreciate or find creepy.

He had painted her before, plenty of times. And she knew that. She had even deigned to model for him on occasion. But those had all been paintings of Queen Bee, not Chloé.

Well…okay. He had also painted Chloé before. But she didn’t know that. He hadn’t told her. Just like he hadn’t told her he…loved her.

Nathanaël tasted blood. He was chewing the inside of his cheek again. Damn it. He forced himself to stop and tried to focus on the dishes in front of him instead, intently watching the way the hot water glided over the surface of the plate, washing away the soap bubbles. Not thinking about Chloé. He set the dish on the drying rack and picked up the next one. Still not thinking about Chloé. He scrubbed the frosting off the bowl in his hands. Definitely not thinking about the way Chloé had swiped a finger in the frosting when she didn’t think anyone was watching. He washed off one of the icing knives and didn’t think about how much Chloé’s face had lit up when he’d handed her a cookie decorated specially for her. He most certainly wasn’t thinking about how much he loved seeing that glowing smile on her, especially knowing that he had caused it, and _especially_ knowing how stressed she had been all day with the various family members arriving at the house, specifically her mother.

He sighed and didn’t notice as he drew his cheek in between his teeth again. It wasn’t the first time he had seen her stressed like that of course—in fact, he had seen her much worse. Like that time when Chef Césaire and the rest of her cooking staff had fallen ill the night before the hotel’s annual investors dinner. Or the time when Papillon figured out that Ladybug and Chat Noir were both out of town so Chloé, Alya, and Nino were left to defend the city _without_ the miraculous cure.

Compared to that and countless other times he had seen the blonde stressed out? Her mother arriving was practically nothing. Chloé handled herself with a certain level of grace—like she always did—even when her hand was squeezing his so tightly he had bruises. Even when she had to practice deep breathing exercises every five minutes to keep calm every hour when her mother inevitably said another slap-in-the-face-type comment.

She really was…such a strong person.

And that’s what made it so absolutely heartbreaking to see her break down crying the way she had the night before.

He tasted blood again. Crap. He forced his mouth to sit still, locking his jaw and glaring down at the pan in his hands as he vigorously scrubbed the burnt cookie pieces off. He just wished there was more he could do for her than just…be there next to her. All he had managed to be was a shoulder to cry on (literally) and a hand to hold ( _literally_ ), but what good was that when she was still so—

Nathanaël stood upright, pausing all movement as two arms suddenly encircled his waist from behind. Not a second later, his momentary panic settled down, the familiar scent of Chloé’s shampoo falling over him as she leaned her head on his shoulder. He was glad she couldn’t see his face then—he was sure it was falling deeper into shades of red by the second.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her cool breath sending a trail of goose bumps along his skin.

“They’re just dishes, it’s no big deal,” he responded in a low voice, smiling to himself and wishing more than he ought to that they could stay in that position forever. Her hold around his waist tightened just the slightest bit, sending all sorts of butterflies fluttering through him.

“Not for that, stupid.” He chuckled at her ever-loving insults. “For being here with me. It means a lot to me.”

He huffed a tiny, self-deprecating laugh. “I feel like I’m not doing anything.” She squeezed even tighter.

“You are.” Then, Nathanaël knew he was living up to the namesake of “tomato”, when Chloé very simply pecked him on the cheek. It was funny. Even after all the cheek kisses and the lip kiss that they had shared for her family, that small gesture—because it was 100% genuine—was the one that floored him. “Thank you,” she repeated. And with one last squeeze, she was gone, leaving the redhead with a blush to match his hair and a stomach back flipping its way to the Olympics.


	5. Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathanaël recalls "the pivotal moment" when he knew what Chloé meant to him.

“So when did it happen?”

“ _It_?” Nathanaël asked in confusion, looking back and forth between Chloé’s cousins, both sitting across the table from him. Isabella—the one who had asked the question—looked like a schoolgirl waiting to hear the newest gossip—despite being a 36 year old businesswoman—with the way she leaned forward over the table, eyes and ears ready to drink in whatever secrets he would give. Marianne, on the other hand, sat back in her chair, soothing cold fingers over the steam rising from her mug of hot chocolate while she intently followed the conversation.

“You know,” Marianne explained for her younger sister, “ _it_. The pivotal moment.”

“The pivotal moment of…what?”

Isabella rolled her eyes. “ _The moment you knew you loved her_.”

His back straightened in his chair and he shifted a bit, eyes widening and a rosy hue surely taking to his cheeks. The moment he knew he loved Chloé Bourgeois? That had been more of a gradual process. But maybe the moment he had realized she meant a lot more to him than he thought…

 

_“Bee!”_

_He hated her. He hated her he hated her he hated her. How dare she do this to him?_

_Nathanaël skidded in some dirt as he rounded the corner, dirt staining the newly scuffed knees of his jeans. He quickly regained his traction and kept running at top speed. This was the first time he had been winded in a while. His lungs hadn’t burned like this for months. Apparently being Chloé’s one and only confidant meant getting a harsher running workout than Kim every day. He barely even thought about it anymore._

_“Bee!” he yelled again, head turning this way and that looking for the place she had landed. He hated her. He hated her for making him look for her like this. He hated her for not answering his calls. He hated her for not having called him yet. He hated her for—_

_The unmistakable glow of her detransformation flashed out from the alley a block away. His legs cried as he picked up his speed even further to get to her. He knew by now that some injuries didn’t catch up to her until she was out of the suit. In other words, her pain probably just increased tenfold._

_“Chloé!” he gasped, finally turning the corner. Relief flooded over him as he was greeted with her familiar yellow-white-black color scheme. That relief drained a second later as he took in the new addition of red._

_She was struggling to pick herself up, desperately resting her weight on shaking arms as her legs refused to move from their place behind her. Her hair was a mess, loose from its ponytail and strewn about her shoulders in knotted, dusty strands. Blood was very quickly seeping further into her white and black striped shirt, the scarlet stain at her middle growing each second._

_Tired blue eyes wandered up to him, eyelids fluttering as her muscles staggered. Her elbows buckled. Her head dipped._

_Nathanaël rushed forward, skidding onto his knees and reaching his arms out to catch her just as she fell. He pulled her onto him, resting her head down on his lap. That was when he saw Pollen, curled in on herself a meter away._

_“Damn it, Chloé,” he cursed. He grabbed her hands and placed them over her waist where blood was pooling. “Keep pressure here,” he said, and quickly began digging through her purse to find her phone. He needed to call an ambulance—no. Her driver. And her personal doctor. The public hospital couldn’t know about this—she would be discovered. “Damn it,” he whispered, fingers shaking as he swiped through the contacts on her phone._

_He hated her. He hated her for putting him in this position. He hated her for taking so many hits for the others all the time. He didn’t care if her ability to fly lent itself to that or if protecting Ladybug for her cure was “more important”—she was important too! He hated her for—_

_“Nath,” she whispered, and he finally let himself look down at her as the phone began to ring for her driver. Her weary eyes were staring up at him and if there was any emotion passing within her, he couldn’t tell. She just looked so_ tired _. “You’re crying.”_

_He gritted his teeth, finally feeling the sting of hot tears spilling from his eyes. He hated her. He hated her for pushing him out of the way. He hated her for taking the swing from the akuma’s stupid physics-defying sword. He hated her for soaring, body nothing but a limp doll, blocks and blocks away._

_He hated her for—_

_“I thought you were dead,” he finally admitted, spitting the words out in furious agony. Her driver picked up a second later. “This is Nathana_ _ël. I need you to get to 36 th as soon as possible.”_

_“I’m sorry,” she whispered. He glanced down at her as he searched for her doctor’s number, lips pressed together in a tight grimace. A fist was around his heart—her fist—and it was squeezing. Hard. Perfectly manicured fingernails digging deep into his flesh with that unreadable mask of near-death shrouding her features. He took a deep breath, forcing air into his chest, and looked up at the brick wall in front of him as the phone rang. He placed his hand over hers, keeping pressure on the wound._

_“Just…don’t scare me like that again.”_

 

“I…” Isabella and Marianne both leaned in further, ready for the scoop. “I’m sure you remember that Chloé was attacked last year, out on the street…” They nodded, expressions darkening at the memory of what was probably a worrying call. “Well, I guess, that pivotal moment…was when I found her.”

“And you realized you didn’t want to lose her,” Marianne completed. He nodded.

“Wow,” Isabella breathed.

“Wow, what?” came that domineering voice that he had so grown to love. The three of them turned to see the hero herself enter from the kitchen. “What are we talking about?”

Nathanaël reached out for her hand as she took a seat next to him. “You.”

She scowled at him, but took his hand nonetheless, fingers threading through his with natural ease. “What about me?”

He gazed at her then, not acting the slightest bit as absolute love, adoration, and _gratitude_ played across his features. Her perfect blonde hair, her expressive blue eyes, her pristine white shirt; they were all perfectly intact right in front of him.

He squeezed her hand tight. “Just…that we’re glad you’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 2 am and I have thesis in the morning. What am I doing. Someone tell me to stop.


	6. Family Arguments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel walks into an argument between cousins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teen Titans spoiler alert.

“That’s a lie and you know it!”

Uh oh.

Nathaniel picked up his pace as he heard what sounded like a very heated argument coming from down the hall. Had Chloé’s mom picked a fight with her in the two minutes he had been gone?

“Are you kidding!? You’re the one who’s ignoring the comics!” he heard Isabella retort.

…Wait what?

“Screw the comics! We’re talking about the TV show here!” Chloé shot back.

When Nathaniel rounded the corner, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Aunt Georgia had left the room, probably to start preparing dinner, which meant that Chloé and her cousins had finally turned the TV away from the hallmark channel. And what had they landed on?

“But the comics informed the TV show, and the hints of BBRae are inarguably present!”

…An episode of the old Teen Titans.

None of the cousins were paying the show any mind though, with Chloé and Isabella on the floor sitting on either side of the coffee table—a safety buffer keeping them from starting an all-out fist fight apparently—and Marianne and her wife, Jasmine, on the couch acting as if they were audience members to a comedic play. The youngest cousin—Ryan, 16 years old and too young to have the same nostalgia for Teen Titans—hadn’t moved from his place in the corner where he continued to scroll on his smartphone.

 _“Hints_ being the key word!” Chloé continued, slamming her hand down on the coffee table. “Any BBRae in the show is subtle—and side note, not even as present as RobRae, which _ew_ —while BBTerra was 100% explicitly canon!”

Nathaniel broke in before Isabella had a chance to respond. “Are you two seriously fighting over a ship war for a cartoon that was cancelled over a decade ago?”

Four of the five heads in the room then whipped to him.

“Yes they are,” Jasmine replied, snickering.

“Nath! Good!” Chloé waved him over to take a seat on the floor next to her. “Help me out here!”

He stayed put, eyeing the situation carefully. “I don’t know, it kinda looks like Ryan’s got the right idea here.” Said teenager didn’t look up from his phone, but nodded in agreement.

“Don’t be silly,” his not-girlfriend said. “Get over here and tell Izzy that BBTerra is canon.”

He carefully approached and sat down as Isabella spoke up again. “Whoa hey, I didn’t say that BBTerra _isn’t_ canon. But it isn’t endgame! She dies!”

“Does she?” Marianne decided to chime in, leaning forward in her seat to pour gasoline on the flames.

“Yeah don’t forget,” Chloé continued, “she’s alive, she just doesn’t remember anything.”

Isabella rolled her eyes. “Yeah and she told Beast Boy to leave her alone so she can go on with her new life. The Terra he knew may as well be dead, and it’s _still_ not endgame!”

“But BBRae isn’t endgame either! Their relationship didn’t even get any attention by the time the show ended! Nath, tell her.” Three sets of nearly identical blue eyes and one set of brown fell on him then, all waiting to see what he would say.

He could feel his face flushing a brighter red by the second.

What should he say? He wanted to take Chloé’s side just for the sake of taking her side, but he didn’t actually agree with her. Not that he agreed with Isabella either though…

“I…” He scratched his head nervously, averting his gaze. _Oh boy,_ he thought, _looks like we’re getting out the shovel. Time to dig my grave._ “I think the best ship is actually Terra and Raven.”

Silence.

He looked up to see everyone practically frozen in place, the only movement their intermittent blinking, as if all considering his words carefully.

“Agreed,” Jasmine finally said, breaking the silence. Marianne hummed and nodded beside her, sitting back against the couch again.

“Yeah, can’t really argue there,” Isabella acquiesced, dropping her shoulders.

Nathaniel looked at Chloé, the only one left who hadn’t said anything, and he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face as he recognized her look of stubborn shame. Finally, she rolled her eyes with an overdramatic sigh.

“Damn it, you’re right.”

“It’s settled, Nathaniel wins,” Marianne declared. Wait, he wins? Didn’t he just bring the argument to a draw?

He didn’t have a chance to clarify before Isabella was leaning across the table and clapping him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the family, Red.”

His blush increased tenfold, not because of the statement, but because of the way Chloé looked at him a moment later.

She was beaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Archive seems to have accepted "Nathaniel" as the proper spelling of his name, so I'm slowly switching to using it. I might go back and edit past chapters. Sorry for this inconsistency >.<


	7. Hanukkah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU Yeah August Day 13: Fake Dating

“So Nathaniel, why aren’t you with your family for Christmas? Are they upset that you left them this year?”

Oh boy. Attention was on him at a table of twelve who were still dishing up and hadn’t actually started eating yet. Dangerous. He hoped his blush would stay under control.

“No, they don’t celebrate Christmas,” he replied.

Aunt Georgia—who had asked the question—looked nearly blasphemed. “What? What kind of people don’t celebrate Christmas!?”

A slight hint of annoyance in her tone, Chloé answered, “Jewish people, Aunt Georgia. Nathaniel is Jewish.”

The woman’s shoulders dropped. “Oh, that makes sense. Well don’t you celebrate Hanukkah though?”

“We do,” he affirmed as he passed Chloé the bowl of potatoes. She didn’t so much as look at them before passing them on to her cousin next to her. “It was earlier this year.”

“I thought Hanukkah was always the same time as Christmas,” she frowned.

“Sometimes it is. It varies. This year it started in late November.”

“Well, I’m glad we get you all to ourselves then. And if your family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, maybe that means you can join us in the future too?”

Nathaniel blinked, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him for a moment.

When Chloé had warned him that her mom’s entire family was a pack of vicious wolves, he had believed her. But upon meeting Aunt Georgia, he had thought that maybe Chloé had simply been forgetting about her. It wasn’t that the woman was a saint by any means, but she seemed relatively harmless. Just a 50-something year old American woman who loved her Hallmark movies and made her family uncomfortable with old-fashioned thinking. Not someone who swiped for blood like the others.

But those eyes were suddenly sharp as they asked the question, testing him to see just how serious he was, just like her mother had done before.

Not a single person at the table hadn’t picked up on it and suddenly, all eyes were on him.

His ears were definitely turning red. But he pushed down his nerves and, just as he had done with Chloé’s mom, answered honestly. “Yeah. I would really like that.”


	8. Sidekick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU Yeah August Day 17: Sidekick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: blood, mild depictions of gore

“You have a personal doctor? I know your dad is loaded, but is that really necessary?”

Chloé cast him a nervous glance as the after-dinner conversation with her cousins suddenly approached dangerous territory. How did they manage to go from arguing over Fruits Basket ships to Chloé’s health in the two minutes it had taken him to go get some cookies??

“I insisted,” he said as he approached. He handed Chloé the bee-themed sugar cookie he had specifically frosted for her earlier that day, then placed his hand gently on her back. His palm smoothed a path down from her right shoulder to her left hip, along which he could just barely feel the raised line of her first scar through the fabric of her shirt.

 

_“Chloé?” He knocked lightly on the door. “Can I come in?”_

_“Yeah,” she replied, and he cringed as she grunted immediately after. With two towels, three of his softest washcloths, and a first aid kit stacked in his arms, he entered the bathroom._

_Chloé’s bloodied shirt lay on the floor along with her sweater, pants, and underwear. The blonde herself was wearing a white bra that was quickly turning pink and the swim trunks he had given her as she very slowly lowered her body into the bathtub. From where he stood, he could finally see the full, unfiltered horror of her injured back._

_Stretching all the way from her right shoulder to her left hip was a deep laceration, still profusely dripping blood that covered almost the entirety of her back. Now that he was seeing it like this, he was certain she was going to need stitches._

_He hated to think what could’ve happened if the miraculous cure hadn’t already healed most of the damage._

_After setting up the supplies he would need, Nathaniel pulled on a pair of gloves and sat on the edge of the tub._

_“I’m going to need to take off your bra,” he said quietly. She was already reaching to do it herself before he was even done speaking, but she winced in the process and dropped her arms._

_“Go ahead,” she grunted._

_Swallowing a nervous lump in his throat, he reached out with shaking fingers and tried his best to unhook the clasp without disturbing the wound. Chloé immediately flinched in pain and he fumbled with it._

_“Never taken off someone’s bra before, Klutzberg?” Her words held a much stronger dose of poison than they had in a while. He immediately bristled to the comment out of reflex, but reminded himself that she had a habit of lashing out when she was in pain._

_“Excuse me for being nervous,” he mumbled as he finally unhooked the damn thing. Chloé hugged the front of it to her chest._

“You’re _nervous? I’m the one about to get stitched up by a klutzy sidekick with shaky hands.”_

_“Let me take you to a doctor then!”_

_“No,” her voice was immediately calm then—calm and insistent. “I’ve already been to the hospital three times in the last two months. People will start to catch on if my injuries keep coinciding with Queen Bee’s.”_

_He pressed his lips shut in frustration. He knew she was right, but that didn’t change the danger of the situation. He had attended a three-week first aid course, not years of medical school. He had been hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t have to use what he’d learned about stitches in that class. All he could think of was the high risk of him fucking up, of the stitches being wrong, of the wound getting infected, of Chloé contracting some awful disease because of him and—_

_“I’m going to start cleaning the wound,” he said, forcing his mind away from catastrophizing. He turned on the water and fussed with it to try and get it to as neutral of a temperature as he could. “Did you take the pain killers I gave you?”_

_“Yeah,” she grunted, “just start.”_

_With a deep breath, Nathaniel tried to clear his head. His hands were always notoriously steady—it was a gift he had taken advantage of with pens and paint brushes and clay. But he would be willing to give up his steady hands for the rest of his life if he could just keep them steady right there and then. All the art in the world didn’t matter when compared to Chloé’s health and well-being._

Please, **please** just let me do this right.

_The moment he first raised the soaked cloth to her skin, she hissed in pain, flinching away. “Shit,” he immediately sprang back. “I’m sorry. Are you okay? Do you want me to sto—?”_

_“No,” she urged through gritted teeth, “it’s fine. Keep going.”_

_That sure wasn’t convincing._

_He was biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood, but he couldn’t care less in the moment. He raised the cloth again and began to gently dab along the wound. She flinched at the first couple touches, and then held her breath and tensed her muscles rock solid for a time. She didn’t start breathing again until he took the washcloth away to rinse it._

_Then a small whimper of pain escaped her lungs as he started again._

_“Distract me,” she said suddenly in a strained voice._

_“What? How?”_

_“I don’t care, just distract me. I need something to think about that’s not—,”_

_“I love you.”_

_“What!?”_

_She suddenly whipped around to look at him, but immediately winced and faced forward._

_“Did that work?”_

_“Are you fucking serious!?”_

_“That depends, did it distract you?”_

_She paused then, briefly. “I fucking hate you.”_

_He laughed at that—a genuine laugh, if pushed through a wall of anxiety—because it just sounded so very_ Chloé. _“Oh that’s a good distraction. How about you list everything you hate about me?”_

_“Where do I even start?” she snorted._

_He chuckled and waited for her to begin. And waited. “Well?”_

_“…I can’t think of anything.”_

_“What?”_

_“I don’t hate you.”_

_He scowled, but kept going. “Did that akuma hit your head too?”_

_“Shut up, Kurtzberg, I’m being serious,” she snapped. Then she sighed. “I stopped hating you a long time ago.”_

_He paused to rinse the washcloth again before smiling to himself. “I don’t hate you either.” She laughed then, but the sound very quickly morphed into a cry of pain that made him cringe. “Okay, the second we’re done here, you’re hiring a personal doctor. I am not cut out for this.”_

_She let out a small huff of laughter. “Will do, Red.”_

 

“What? Why?” Isabella immediately asked. Chloé took a bite of her cookie and leaned into him, pressing her head into his shoulder comfortably as he stroked her back. Moments like these were the easiest for him to forget that they weren’t actually dating. Moments when his affectionate, comforting touches were completely genuine and she melded into him so naturally.

“Because she’s stubborn and didn’t want to go to the hospital even though she kept getting hurt from all the akumas that target her.”

Then she jabbed him in the ribs.


	9. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel had his appendix removed.

“When the hell did you get abs?”

Nathaniel blinked in surprise and turned to fully face the woman who wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she was ogling him while he took off his shirt. Should he be flattered that she was staring at him so unabashedly? He wanted to be, but he was mostly distracted by how her eyebrows were knit together in intense confusion.

“Um. Okay first off,” he began as he dropped his shirt in the laundry basket, “you say that as if you’ve seen me shirtless before.” Those sharp blue eyes rose to meet his gaze with a frown. “Secondly, I don’t have abs. I just have absolutely no body fat.”

“That’s not true,” she immediately argued. She stepped closer then and he tensed up as she reached out toward his torso with cold fingers. She didn’t seem to notice though, back to scrutinizing his form. “There’s muscle here,” she said as her thumbs traced along the _very_ soft contours on his stomach. “Do you work out?” Her tone carried across as extremely confused, because she knew damn well that he hated any gym that wasn’t Pokémon related.

“I mean,” he stared at the wall across the room and tried not to think too hard about her fingertips dancing along his skin, or the way she looked dressed in her undershirt and pajama shorts again, “I do run a lot chasing you around the city.”

She chuckled, the sound of it more sadistic than anything else. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Her hands paused a moment later. When he looked back at her, he found her gaze fixated on his side, where her fingers were tracing a delicate line he knew well. “You have a scar,” she noted, voice soft.

“Yeah. I had to have my appendix removed when I was younger.”

“I…” She blinked, fingers just repeatedly tracing the raised line above his hip. “I didn’t know you had a scar.”

She looked almost troubled at the thought. She didn’t say anything more; just kept staring at his scar and smoothing over it with cold hands.

“Chloé?”

Her lips squeezed together in a frown. She didn’t look up. “Nath, how many scars do I have?”

He blinked in surprise, but recited the information off the top of his head nonetheless. “Three big ones—on your back, your stomach, and your left arm—and six smaller ones from cuts that didn’t quite heal after the miraculous cure.” He paused, noting the way her expression darkened further. “Why?”

“I didn’t know you had a scar,” she repeated.

“Chloé, I was there for all of your scars. Mine happened when I was six. It only makes sense that you didn’t know.”

She only pressed her lips together in a stubborn display of frustration. “But it’s a _scar,_ and I didn’t know about it. What else don’t I know about you?” Her gaze lingered another moment before she looked up. “Do you have any other scars?”

Any other time, those blue eyes focusing on him with her hands still on his skin would be driving him crazy, but in that moment all he could think about was how much sorrow lay embedded in that look. He forced himself to look away and raised his hands, searching between them for a particular red mark. “Here,” he said, holding out his right. “I burned myself on a hot glue gun.” She took up his hand in both of hers and a tiny smile donned her lips.

“Last year, when you were making that ridiculous sculpture.”

“Hey,” he rebuked, tone light in the hopes of cheering her up, “that was a sculpture of my favorite hero. I will not stand here and listen to you insult it.”

She chuckled, though the smile still wasn’t reaching her eyes. “No, idiot.” She paused to look up at him again, fixing a quizzical glare on him. “You burned yourself on the Queen Bee one.”

“I know.”

That gave her pause.

She looked down at his hand again with a smile—a real one, albeit small. The sight of it sent butterflies rushing straight through him. “I thought Chat Noir was your favorite.”

“Are you kidding? Have you _seen_ Queen Bee?”

She shrugged, smile growing. “She is pretty hot.”

“And don’t forget _strong._ She could deadlift me without breaking a sweat. In fact, I think she has.” She shook her head with a small laugh. Then that sorrow seeped back in as she traced a thumb over the burn. He squeezed her hand. “Hey.” Those beautiful blue eyes rose once again and he smiled. “You know me better than anyone.”

She rolled her eyes then and he caught a glimpse of a smile as she turned and walked away. “Well duh. You’re an introverted dweeb with no friends.”

He smiled. There was the Chloé he knew and loved.


	10. Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raiding the kitchen in the middle of the night is holiday tradition.

“Hey Nath?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sleeping?”

“Is that even a question?”

“Oh thank goodness.” Chloé’s rainbow-luminescent form sprang up from the bed with far too much energy. He watched as she stretched her arms up above her head. He really was such a sucker for how the Christmas lights glowed on her flawless skin, and the way her muscles flexed mid-stretch. Even in the darkness of night, she was heavenly. “I can’t sleep,” she continued, turning to him. Loose hair fell about her shoulders in smooth waves at the front, but he caught glimpses of knots forming toward the back. Somehow, the imperfection that he so rarely got to witness was even more attractive on her. “Want to raid the kitchen with me?” Light glinted off that devilish grin.

He smiled back. “You just want to binge on more sugar cookies.”

“Your point being?”

…Well, he didn’t really have a response to that.

Three minutes later the two managed to make it to the kitchen after not-so-stealthily descending the creakiest staircase in existence.

“Will we get in trouble for being down here or something?” Nathaniel whispered, noting the way she was sneaking about.

Chloé shrugged. She peeled the plastic wrap back from one of the giant plates overfilled with cookies that sat on the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Dunno. I’ve never been caught.”

“So you do this often?”

“Every year.”

Then she looked up with a mischievous glint in her eye as she bit the head off of a Rudolph cookie. After he had gone through all the trouble of perfectly dotting the nose with red too.

He smiled and tried to reach past her for a cookie but she blocked him with her body, that mischief growing tenfold. His eyes connected with hers, brows raised. Her glare proposed a duel. He narrowed his gaze in acceptance.

Eyes locked in an intense staring contest, Nathaniel lunged to the other side of her, trying to reach around for a cookie. But goodness knows the bee was faster than he was, blocking his move both with body positioning and an intercepting arm all while taking another bite of her cookie—this time, the reindeer’s back legs. He darted for the other side again and was blocked. He would need a different tactic.

Nathaniel sprung to the side, running around the island to try and reach across for the cookies. His arm was just long enough, the plate was within reach, his fingers just a centimeter away from Frosty the Snowman. Then two strong arms wrapped around his middle and spun him in the other direction. Nathaniel slid—socks gliding across tile with ease—until his back was to the counter behind him. Not a moment later, Chloé’s hands smacked down by his sides, trapping him with triumphant eyes. And all the while with Rudolph’s front half sticking out of her mouth.

A smile playing at his lips, Nathaniel enacted Plan C.

Before she could slip away, he reached out to take hold of her waist, lunged forward, and bit off Rudolph’s front legs.

The look of outrage was the icing on the cake as he leaned back, enjoying the taste of sweet sweet sugar cookie victory.

Then their attention snapped to the door as the lights flicked on.

Ryan stood there, glaring at them with an _I’m too tired for this shit_ sort of expression. He shook his head in disgust as he walked over to the sink to refill his water glass.

“You two are nauseating.”


	11. Frozen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a request on tumblr:  
> "Do you wanna build a--,"  
> "Absolutely not."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caution: a certain song from a certain Disney movie will almost assuredly get stuck in your head.

“’Let’s go sledding,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said.”

Nathaniel couldn’t help but laugh at Chloé’s endless complaining as they trudged through the snow. She had been muttering angrily in French since they’d gotten out of the car and begun the long trek up the snowy mountain. Aside from Audrey—who wasn’t paying her any attention anyway, as per usual—no one in her American family spoke the language, making him the only person privy to her annoyed ramblings.

“Bunch of snow obsessed freaks,” she continued. “Wow! What a great idea! Let’s freeze our asses off hiking uphill, knee deep in snow, for _for-fucking-ever_ just so we can spend two seconds sliding back down! And then! Let’s do it all _again!_ And _keep going_ until our legs fall off from frostbite! That sounds fucking fantastic!”

He pulled his scarf up over his mouth in a weak attempt to stifle his laughter, but Isabella’s head turned briefly to look back at them a moment later, indicating his failure.

Chloé smacked his arm—though he barely felt it through the three jackets he was wearing. “Stop laughing at my misery, you bitch.” That only made him laugh more.

“This is what you get for staying up eating cookies,” he said between giggles. While Nathaniel was fairly accustomed to not getting enough sleep, Chloé without at least 8 hours was automatically grumpy and slightly more aggressive than usual. It was hilarious. And stupidly cute.

“I stand by my actions,” she replied, lifting her chin in pride and crossing her arms again. “What I don’t stand by is this ridiculous notion that trudging through the arctic tundra is a required activity on Christmas Eve. Because nothing says holiday spirit like turning your bones to solid fucking ice climbing a snowy mountain and burning your face off from freezing fucking wind whipping your skin on the way down!”

Chloé spewed no less than seven more increasingly creative French profanities by the time they reached the top. Still chuckling, Nathaniel set down the sled he’d been tasked with carrying and looked at Chloé in silent question.

“No,” she immediately replied. “I’m not sledding down until we’re leaving. And neither are you for that matter,” she added.

“What? Why?” He didn’t mind—he wasn’t really all that interested in sledding unless she was in the sled with him if he was being honest—but he was still curious as to her reasoning.

“Because,” she began. She stepped up close to him—like blush-rising-to-his-cheeks-despite-the-cold close—and wrapped herself in his arms, putting her back to his chest. “It’s your job to keep me warm.”

He laughed as he settled his arms comfortably around her and began to rock her in a gentle sway. He moved his mouth next to her ear and dropped his voice to a low murmur, speaking in French just in case. “You’re really taking advantage of this fake dating thing, aren’t you?”

“Got a problem with that?” She squeezed his arms closer to her as she asked, indicating that his answer really didn’t matter; he had no choice in the situation.

Still, he smiled and answered honestly. “None whatsoever.”

“Good, because you’re still on heater duty later when we go back to Aunt Georgia’s. I’m going to be freezing for hours.”

“You mean you’re going to be _frozen_ while we watch _Frozen?”_ he teased. Chloé groaned, head falling back against his shoulder in agony. He shook with sadistic laughter. Her cousins had insisted on watching Frozen as a family despite Chloé’s pleas to watch ‘literally anything else,’ and he had made sure to remind her of that fact at least every hour since, finding endless entertainment in her annoyance.

“I swear to fucking god, Nathaniel, if you start singing, I’ll—,”

_“Do you wanna build a—,”_

“Absolutely not,” she interrupted threateningly, but it was too late.

 _“Or ride our bike around the haaalllls,”_ Isabella immediately sang, whipping around to face them.

Marianne was next, not even missing a beat. _“I think some company is overdue!”_

Then Jasmine beside her, _“I’ve started talking to!”_

And all three came together, _“The pictures on the waaalllls!”_ They cut in perfect unison and looked to Chloé expectantly.

A few seconds passed before her shoulders slumped in an annoyed sigh.

“Hang in there, Joan.”

The others giggled and continued to sing as their voices disappeared down the mountain. The second they were gone, Chloé spoke again.

“I’m going to murder you.”


	12. Family Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to meet the rest of the family~

“Oh! Okay, I got it. _He’s_ the son of Mr. Important Businessman and was raised to be cold and lifeless so he could take over the company someday. _She’s_ the owner of Tiny Family Toy Shop, which his father is going to shut down—along with a bunch of other small businesses—so that they can set up their new location. _She_ however is waayyyy more feisty than he expects and not only rallies the people to fight back, but also steals his heart and inspires him to change his father’s business for the better.”

From where they sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, they could hear the actual Hallmark movie playing on the TV over their shoulder, but neither of them were interested in actually watching it; their guessing game was far more entertaining.

“Alright alright,” Nathaniel nodded in agreement. He sat right behind her, arms and legs parted around her form so she could sit with her back to his chest and her front to the fire, getting absolutely as much warmth as possible. Usually, sitting so close to the fire for so long would have him sweating like hell, but Chloé’s natural cold seemed to keep him in perfect balance. He held each of her frigid hands in his, mindlessly playing with them as he spoke. “So who are the side characters?”

“Well first you’ve got cold business dad of course,” she began. “Then there’s Toy Shop Gal’s _male_ childhood best friend who _‘knows what it’s like’_ —,” she air quoted, “for the white upper middle class _‘common folk,’_ unlike Business Son. He’s been in love with her the whole time and acts like a jealous bitch when she starts getting close to Business Son.”

“Oh, let me guess,” Nathaniel chimed in, “he does something petty to make Business Son look bad, creating The Big Drama.”

“Of course, because the only conflict you can ever have around Christmas is based purely upon misunderstandings.”

“Of course, of course,” he nodded. “Okay, who else?”

“Okay, there’s Toy Shop Gal’s mom and pop who are a thinly veiled representation of Santa and Mrs. Claus, Business Son’s shallow ex-girlfriend who’s trying to convince him to keep to his own kind and just be the heartless business man he was raised to be, and the one— _1—_ ,” she held up a single finger to emphasize, “—person of color is Toy Shop Gal’s best friend who really only exists for a couple of conversations in which she teases Toy Shop Gal about her budding affections for Business Son.”

Nathaniel opened his mouth to continue, but before he could, Aunt Edith walked in, followed by her wife, Margaret, and son, Ryan. “Using French to gossip behind our backs again?” she asked as she took a seat on the couch across the room. Margaret sat down next to her while Ryan elected to sit on the floor near their feet.

“Oh, sorry,” Chloé said, switching back to English. She turned to face them and Nathaniel repositioned himself so he could ~~keep cuddling her~~ keep up with his appointed heater duties. “I guess we just naturally slip back into French when we’re alone.”

“Well stop,” Aunt Georgia said as she bustled in from the kitchen carrying two mugs of hot chocolate buried under mountains of marshmallows. “It’s English-speaking family time.” Isabella, Marianne, and Jasmine came in right behind her, each holding platters of various snack foods and their own mugs of hot chocolate. They each sat down on the floor around the coffee table.

“Chloé, share this with Nathaniel,” Aunt Georgia ordered as she handed over one of the hot chocolates. She gave the other one to Ryan.

Chloé plucked a single marshmallow off the top and fed it to him. “That’s all you get.” He laughed while she practically inhaled half the mountain of marshmallows.

Aunt Georgia looked around the living room as she took a seat in her rocking chair. “Where are mom, dad, and Audrey?”

“Right here!” Grandma Renee sauntered into the living room from the hall holding Grandpa Nick’s hand, Audrey following close behind. Audrey sat at the end of the couch next to Margaret, leaving the loveseat next to the tree for her parents. “Gift time?”

“Gift time,” Aunt Georgia confirmed.

Nathaniel leaned forward to steal another marshmallow. “You open gifts on Christmas Eve?”

“Mhmm,” Chloé hummed through her sip of hot chocolate. She offered him the mug, apparently deeming him worthy of such a privilege. “Just one. The rest are for tomorrow morning.”

“Alright Dad,” Edith said. “Start us off.”

“I get Renee!” he immediately said, leaning over and plucking a small wrapped gift from under the tree.

Chloé leaned back to whisper, “Grandpa claims Grandma’s first present every year.” Nathaniel smiled. Once again, Chloé’s grandparents were proving themselves to be the cutest old couple he’d ever heard of.

“And I get Audrey,” Grandma Renee continued. “Ryan, can you grab that terribly wrapped green one over there and give it to Aunt Audrey?” The boy nodded and took up his new station on the floor next to the tree.

“Okay,” Audrey replied, “then I’ll take Georgia.” She pointed for Ryan as he delivered her gift. “That red bag with the sparkly tissue paper.”

“I want Edith,” Aunt Georgia went on. She elected to get up and go find the gift herself instead of making her nephew work for her.

“I’ve got Ryan,” Aunt Edith continued. “You can grab that heavy one you’ve been eyeing all week.”

He nodded and grabbed another gift, holding it out to his cousin. “Marianne.”

“Then I’ll take Margaret,” she said, shuffling over to the tree to find it.

“Hmm,” Margaret thought a moment, “Jasmine. That lumpy blue one.”

“Okay! Love, can you find Chloé’s for me?” Marianne gave her a thumbs up.

Chloé tapped Nathaniel’s arm. “Go grab Izzy and Grandpa’s presents.”

He got up to follow orders, confused. “You’re taking two?”

“Of course, we have to.”

He had just handed Grandpa Nick his present and was about to ask why Chloé was taking two people when a gift suddenly appeared in front of his face. He looked up to see Isabella smiling at him, eyes practically sparkling. “You didn’t honestly think we were going to leave you out, did you?”

He blinked in surprise and tried to process what was happening while his hands automatically accepted the gift. “I-I— Well— Um— Th-thank you.” A fervent blush was rapidly taking to his cheeks, he could feel it. Because no, he most certainly did not expect her family to get him gifts.

Her grin widened as he handed over her gift. “Open it! I want to know if my guess was right.”

Nathaniel did as he was told as soon as he retook his place sitting behind Chloé. Her free hand naturally settled over his arm as he reached around her to tear open the gift wrap.

He blinked in surprise at the set of pastel acrylic paints in his hands.

“H-How…?” he looked at Chloé but she seemed just as confused as he was.

When the two of them had arrived two days ago, the hoard of gifts under the tree had already been complete—Chloé having sent hers ahead of time. He was absolutely positive that no gifts had been bought and added since then.

He was also absolutely positive that Chloé hadn’t told her family a single thing about him save his name before then.

And yet, somehow, not only had Isabella known to get him art supplies, she’d even gotten him the exact art supplies he had recently depleted.

“So I was right?” she asked giddily.

“Y-Yeah,” he stuttered out, looking up at her. “I _just_ ran out of a lot of my pastel shades. How did you…?”

“We had Ryan internet stalk you.” The boy made a peace sign in confirmation. “After scrolling through your Instagram for a while, I noticed that you seemed to be going through some sort of pastel phase lately and thought you might be needing more.” She sat back against the couch holding her chin high in pride.

“Wow.” He blinked, absolutely bewildered by the lengths this family went to just to get him Christmas gifts. And a little bit scared. “I— Um… Thank you.”

“That reminds me,” Aunt Georgia spoke up, “why aren’t you two in a relationship on any of your social media?”

Nathaniel felt Chloé mildly tense up in his arms, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Publicity.” He absentmindedly stroked his thumb over her shoulder in a soothing gesture.

“Oh yeah, I suppose you’re still the mayor’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes!” Grandma Renee chimed, “How is André?”

It was almost imperceptible, but he didn’t miss Chloé’s tiny beat of hesitation before smiling. “He’s good, Grandma. Really good.”

“And the hotel? Business is going well?” Grandpa Nick asked. Nathaniel spared a glance toward Audrey to see her even more disengaged than usual, bored eyes set on the television. Without thinking about it, he hugged Chloé the slightest bit closer.

“Yeah, it is,” she replied.

“Especially since she took over management,” he added with a smile. Her grandparents reflected it.

“Yeah?”

“Well, not to brag,” she said, completely bragging, “but employee and guest satisfaction _has_ hit an all-time high since I stepped in.”

And as if on cue, the second Chloé was beginning to glow, Audrey decided to speak.

“Yes, well, shall we get to gifts?”

Chloé handled herself with grace as the conversation moved on. But Nathaniel didn’t miss the change in her breathing, or the way she took another drink to hide her expression.

He pulled her just a little bit closer—not enough to catch anyone’s attention, but maybe just enough to make sure she knew she was loved.


	13. Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,  
> And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.  
> ...  
> O then dear saint, let lips do what hands do.

“I don’t know. Saying that it _hurts_ isn’t really accurate at this point. It’s like I’m too used to it for it to hurt.”

Nathaniel cast a worried look over his shoulder to see those blue eyes wandering off in the distance as she took another bite of her cookie. He loved those eyes—absolutely adored them—but he would give just about anything to never see them looking like _that._ The expression she wore was hard, jaded. The look of a woman who had put up with far too much bullshit far too consistently, and from her mother of all people.

“That sounds like it would hurt more,” he commented. He turned back to the kitchen cabinet where he was rummaging around in pursuit of a somewhat healthier snack than the sugar cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, caramel corn, and candy sitting on the island with Chloé. So far, the best option was looking like a box of Wheat Thins.

“No, you don’t get it. Sure, overall, the neglect hurts. A lot. You’ve already seen…that.” He pressed his lips together at the memory of her crying two nights prior. “But the individual interactions… There’s a sort of numbness to them at this point.”

“Tell that to my hands,” he mumbled, moving his search to the fridge.

“Excuse me?”

He held up a hand without turning. “I have bruises from your death grip. You squeeze tighter every time she says something.”

“Oh… I’m sorry…”

He paused as he pulled out a bag of grapes, her tone making his stomach drop. When he looked back again, he found those eyes now downcast, staring at the half-eaten cookie in her hands.

_Shit._

He closed the refrigerator and immediately crossed to where she sat on the island, setting the grapes on the counter next to her. “Hey.” He gently took up one of her hands and purposefully positioned her fingers to wrap around his. When he looked up, she was watching him with sad eyes—eyes he was kicking himself for having caused this time. He smiled softly. “My hands are yours to bruise.”

Nathaniel blinked and when he opened his eyes, though nothing had changed, somehow her expression had shifted. Sorrow no longer weighed heavy in her gaze as she stared back at him. Rather, she seemed pensive, eyes darting back and forth between his as if heavily considering something. Something she hadn’t considered before.

Of all the times she’d looked at him, he was pretty sure he’d never seen a look like that. It brought an all-too-familiar bubbling anxiety stirring through his stomach and heat rising to his cheeks, because _that_ was not just any look. He didn’t dare look away for fear of it disappearing, another product of his hopeful imagination.

Then she blinked. Her fingers tightened around his and the corners of her lips tilted up in a small smile, expression falling back to normal.

“Thanks, Nath.”

He let out a small sigh of relief. Regardless of what kinds of feelings that look had been giving him, having her smile back was worth infinitely more. “Always. Now please—,” he reached for the bag of grapes, “—eat something other than cookies.”

He popped a grape into his mouth and watched as Chloé’s usual attitude flooded back in, eyes flaring defiantly. Maintaining aggressive eye contact, she leaned forward and slowly, deliberately raised her cookie to take a giant chomp.

“How are you not sick of all the sugar by now?”

She shrugged and sat up straight again, swinging her legs jovially. “Maybe it’s because I’m so sweet.”

“Yeah, or maybe your lack of sweetness calls for more sugar to make up for it.” She smacked his arm and he laughed. “At least eat one grape.”

She rolled her eyes with an overdramatic sigh before opening her mouth and looking at him expectantly. _You are way cuter than you have any right to be,_ he thought as he fed her a grape. A second later, he shifted his attention toward the clock in an effort not to think about her lips closing over the ends of his fingers and how much he wanted literally any excuse to feel those lips on his again (spoiler alert: it didn’t work).

_12:34._

He smiled. “Let me be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas, Chloé.”

She followed his gaze before donning a warm smile of her own. “Merry Christmas, Nathaniel.”


	14. Morning Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nath has a pretty nice body pillow.

Chloé’s family was nearly as high-strung as she was _(nearly),_ which meant that every morning they had spent there thus far had begun no later than 8am.

Chloé’s alarm went off at 7 every morning—much to Nathaniel’s dismay—and she would immediately spring out of bed to go take her shower. Meanwhile, Nathaniel would cling to what sweet sleep he could still claim before she returned twenty minutes later to kick him out so she could change. Nathaniel would spend the next ten minutes in the shower trying (and failing) to not picture the beads of moisture that rolled down Chloé’s neck from her wet hair and disappeared under her robe. Then he would return to the room to find the queen fully clothed with her hair blown dry, leaning up close to the vanity to apply her eyeliner. Her majesty would deign to allow him to plop back down on the bed for five minutes—maybe ten if he was lucky and she wasn’t—and rest his eyes until she was done with her makeup. Then hand in hand, they would brave the den of wolves downstairs.

Family tradition, however, demanded that Christmas Day be a day of rest. Thus—as Chloé had explained to him the night before—no alarms were to be set in the house that morning, allowing him to wake up slowly for the first time in nearly a week.

Pleasant, bright light shined in through the windows and caressed Nathaniel’s closed lids, gently drawing him from sleep. Under the covers, he was warm, but not too warm. This was one of those rare times in which his body had managed to find equilibrium, allowing him a full night’s rest without shivering or sweating, and he would be a damn liar if he were to claim any desire to leave that comfort until absolutely necessary.

A tiny whine escaping the back of his throat, Nathaniel pressed his face into the pillow to hide from the sun. His limbs automatically tightened their hold on the body pillow, hugging it closer to more fully absorb its delightful chill.

Then the body pillow giggled.

Was it normal for pillows to giggle? He was pretty sure it wasn’t. He was also pretty sure it wasn’t normal for pillowcases to feel like skin under his palms.

Brows knit together in tired confusion, Nathaniel’s eyes slowly blinked open.

Cold blue—bright and clear and more radiant than ever in the morning light—met his gaze, already awake and awaiting him. Her stomach rose and fell with steady breaths under his arm while her fingers lay on top, tracing mindless patterns along his skin. His legs had weaved a complicated path through hers, tying them close together, and his face, he realized, had pressed not into a pillow but into the crook of Chloé’s neck.

Her expression remained steady, calm, a tiny relaxed smile upon her perfect pink lips. She was watching him with a serene look befitting of such a slow, pleasant morning, though there was something swimming behind those eyes. Something new, just like the night before. She was thinking, contemplating, but unlike last time, she was rested and tranquil and…happy. Those novel thoughts weren’t embedded deep in a sea of sadness this time; rather, they were floating free atop the soothing waves of a peaceful morning.

 _Wow,_ he thought. He would be pretty alright with waking up to a look like that every day for the rest of his life. Or just waking up to _her_ every day for the rest of his life. She was absolutely radiant.

…And he was absolutely tangled up in her.

“Hi…” he whispered through the morning fog in his mind. What he meant to say was something like ‘Sorry I’m so wrapped around you right now; I should have warned you that I’m an aggressive cuddler,’ or perhaps ‘Good morning, Chloé. Would you like me to disentangle myself from you?’ But he said neither of those things, nor did he move an inch. He was far too enchanted by that mystifying blue gaze to do much of anything until she chose to release him.

She giggled again, soft, and he remembered that his pulling her closer had elicited that exact sound moments ago. It twinkled over his ears—clear spring water on a hot summer’s day—and made him want to nuzzle into her neck a million times over just to hear it again.

“Hi Nathaniel,” she said, voice ten times more lucid and alert than he was—and clearly amused by that fact.

“I’m kind of…” _hopelessly in love with you, enchanted by you, really happy to be cuddling you, more comfortable in this bed with you than I have been alone in my own for years,_ “…wrapped around you.”

There was that light, shimmering giggle again. God, he wanted to kiss those smiling lips.

“Yes you are,” she confirmed.

“Sorry,” he whispered, not really meaning it. A moment later he looked back to her eyes, realizing his gaze had lingered on her mouth.

She shrugged and finally looked away, turning her head to stare up at the ceiling. Meanwhile, he admired her profile, relishing in the sight of that beautiful, peaceful smile. “I don’t mind,” she said lightly. “You’re nice and warm.”

He sighed happily and closed his eyes, allowing his head to relax next to her shoulder again. He knew he must really be waking up when he actually suppressed the urge to skim his lips along her skin. “How long have I been like this?”

She shrugged again. “Dunno. We were already like this when I woke up.” He hummed softly. “I think I started it, actually. I vaguely remember scooting closer to you in the middle of the night to steal your heat.”

He chuckled. “Thief.”

“Oh please, I know you’re stealing my cold too.”

“Mutual theft doesn’t make you not a thief.” Wow, he really loved the way her stomach shook with laughter underneath him. His thumb mindlessly traced over the bare skin of her waist where her shirt had ridden up.

“But it does make you a thief too; so if I go down, you’re going down with me.”

 _I’ll go down on you whenever you wa—_ Nathaniel snapped his eyes open and cleared his throat, trying to force his mind away from the dangerous path it was about to go down.

“So what’s the plan for today?”

Chloé sucked in a huge breath and let it out slow. “Well, we get up whenever and eat breakfast. Once everyone’s awake and ready, we open gifts. Then Aunt Georgia will assign everyone a job and the rest of the day will be preparing Christmas Dinner. Then we’ll eat, watch A Christmas Carol, and pass out.” She turned her head to look at him again and he felt his heart stutter. “So what do you think? Should we get up and go down there, or wait a bit longer?”

Her fingers were still absently tracing patterns along his arm, each one sending tingling sensations over his skin. Without thinking about it, he tightened his hold on her just the slightest bit.

She smiled. “Me too.”


	15. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting gifts is hard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Some of you may have already seen this chapter; sorry for the confusion! I decided to rewrite the dream because I want to keep this fic closer to the wholesome fluff that it's been so far. I know a lot of people liked what happened last time (I did too) but I decided it didn't really fit in this fic.

“From Chloé _and_ Nathaniel, huh?” Grandma Renee commented as she looked at the gift in her hands, eyebrow raised with a suspicious smirk. Nathaniel passed the last one to Marianne and returned to his place at Chloé’s side, naturally slipping an arm around her shoulders. She immediately reached up and threaded her fingers through his, leaning into him as she spoke.

“Yep, Nath helped me pick out gifts, so if you don’t like them, blame him.”

Grandma Renee nodded with a delightfully surprised smile. This part of their story was, for once, not a lie. It was back toward the end of July—he hadn’t even known he’d be accompanying her yet—when Chloé had asked for his help with gifts.

_It was the height of summer and Nathaniel could barely keep cool, even with his bedroom window open and the fan on high. The season was by far his least favorite—the elevated temperatures meant overheating every single day, and falling asleep comfortably? Good luck._

_But he had to admit, looking at the gorgeous woman before him in the evening twilight, he could see an upside to warm weather._

_Her cheeks were flushed, painting them a lovely pink, and little strands of blonde hair stuck to her neck here and there. Her body over all boasted a thin layer of sweat, making her practically glisten at every point light touched her._

_His thumb traced the delicate curve of her cheek and he watched as her eyes fell shut. With a sigh, she leaned into his touch, pressing her face to the palm of his hand. A simple smile lay upon her perfect glossy pink lips._

_He wanted so very badly to feel those lips on his own—to know the taste of her. He had to know what it was to kiss a queen. The heat made him rash, but maybe—just maybe—it made her rash too._

_He leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers. Those brilliant, piercing blue eyes snapped open, but she didn’t pull away. Rather, as her gaze drifted down to his lips, she tilted her head to meet his._

_Then her eyes shut again, and she waited. Waited for him to—_

_Nathaniel groaned as a distinct buzzing dragged him from the sweet seduction of the sleep he had tried so hard to achieve. He begrudgingly slapped his bedside table, hand groping around for his phone. Without looking at the contact information, he hit the answer button and tiredly held it to his ear._

_“Hel—“_

_“You were a teenage boy once, right?”_

_“…Chloé?”_

_Her answer was immediate, that bitchy voice that he had the oddest most unexpected but strong attraction to ringing loud and clear._

_“Of course it’s Chloé; no one else talks to you.”_

_“Alix talks to me,” he argued drowsily. “And…Adrien. And Max. Juleka. Ro—,”_

_“Yeah, yeah, whatever, you’re very popular. Look, I don’t know how teenage boys think.”_

_He was sure that somewhere in his knowledge of this woman and the goings on in her life, that statement made sense. But in his sleep deprived state?_

_“So?”_

_“So I need your help.”_

_“Can’t this wait until it’s not early?_

_“Nath, it is 9:30.”_

_“Which is early.”_

_He heard a sigh over the phone, followed by that tone she always used when she lectured him. It was oddly endearing, albeit annoying. “When did you go to sleep?”_

_He hesitated. “…4…”_

_His lie was thinly veiled behind his fatigue and her suspicious tone indicated that he wasn’t fooling anyone. “4 what?”_

_“…4:60.”_

_“So 5.”_

_“Maybe.”_

_She sighed again, a little more aggravated this time, and if he wasn’t so tired he would probably laugh at her perpetual frustration with his life habits. A moment of silence went by where he could practically hear her thinking, the sound of the cogs turning in her head soothing him back to rest…_

_“If I let you sleep until 1, will you come help me shop for my family?”_

_He hummed in thought as he tried to remember his plans for the day. Eventually he realized the reason he couldn’t remember them was because he had none._

_“Make it 2 and I’ll even take a shower for you,” he finally responded._

_“1:30,” she bargained._

_“2.”_

_“1:45.”_

_“2.”_

_“UGH. Fine. I’m going to call you again at exactly 2. **Exactly**.”_

_He smiled. “Goodnight, Chloé.”_

_“IT’S NOT NIGH—,”_

_“Goodniiiiight.”_

_He hung up and dropped the phone back on his bedside table, arm flopping over the edge of his bed, too weak to make it the whole way back. Sleep was very quickly seeping back in. Was it wrong of him to hope he went back to that same dream?_

 

“And if we do like the gifts?” Grandma Renee continued.

“Then blame me, of course,” Chloé shrugged, holding her chin high with a confident smile.

She got a few laughs and even more smiles as people moved to the task of unwrapping their presents. But along with the slight tightening of her grip on his hand, Nathaniel saw what the others didn’t: the nervous glance at Audrey.

 

_“You know Christmas is in December, right?”_

_“Yeah, so?”_

_Nathaniel’s hair was already completely dry and he was feeling the beginning beads of sweat collecting at the back of his neck. Even in his most ripped up pair of jeans and a loose, extremely breezy tank top, the summer heat was still getting the best of him._

_He pulled off his sunglasses and hooked them onto his shirt so he could pull his hair up in a ponytail. “So, it’s July.”_

_“Okay, I know you don’t celebrate Christmas, but you’re not seriously stupid enough to think that it’s a good idea to put off my shopping until December, right?” She turned around to face him, holding up a t-shirt she’d grabbed from the street vendor. “What about this?”_

_“No.”_

_“But it has—,”_

_“Chloé, I promise you he does not want clothes.” He smiled at the adorable pout she gave him before something over her shoulder caught his eye. “I feel like you mentioned a family member having an odd obsession with wind chimes at some point.”_

_“Yeah, Aunt Edith, why?” He took her shoulders and turned her around, leaning in close to point a few booths down where an artist had a bunch of wind chimes hanging from their awning. “Oh, perfect!” She immediately dropped the shirt and skipped off in glee._

Paris’s most fearsome superhero, everyone.

_He put his sun glasses back on as he followed. Chloé was always radiant, but he swore she was especially so that day. Her hair was up in its usual ponytail, but with the addition of a bright yellow ribbon tied up in a bow on top of her head that bounced with every step she took. Her dress—made of a very soft-looking white and black striped fabric (not that he had been thinking about what it would feel like; he totally wasn’t)—tied up behind her neck and stayed snug around her waist before falling loose at her hip to flutter around her legs as she moved. As if that wasn’t enough already, she’d even decided to put on red lipstick that day, effectively hammering the final nail in his coffin._

_She turned and beamed at him, and all he could think was that he was lucky her sunglasses protected him from that blue gaze he was such a sucker for. “Nath, come look at these! I don’t know which one to pick!”_

_Despite her anxieties over getting gifts for her mother’s family, Chloé was still absolutely in her element shopping at all. As much as he didn’t really care for the activity himself, he would gladly accompany her on any shopping trip, if just to see that smile._

_“Do you know her favorite color?” he asked as he approached. Chloé frowned as she scrutinized them each individually._

_“No…” Then her face lit up. “But she_ is _trans!” He was just about to ask what that had to do with anything when she reached out to take one with a subtle pink-white-blue color scheme. “I’ll take this one!”_

_Nathaniel waited for her to pay the artist before turning to keep walking. “Okay, so who do you still have left?”_

_She pulled up the checklist on her phone. “Ryan, Margaret, Marianne, and my mother.”_

_“And you don’t have any ideas for them?”_

_She let loose an overdramatic sigh and walked over to the next kiosk to halfheartedly examine their dresses. “No.” She frowned. “Especially my mother. I never know what to get her.”_

Uh oh, _he thought. That face didn’t come out often, but it was by far his least favorite of her various expressions. She’d only talked about her mother on a select few occasions—he’d tried to avoid the subject after the first time—but every time, without fail, it cast an uncharacteristic melancholy over her. There wasn’t a single person in Paris who didn’t know about Audrey’s flight from the country years ago, but it wasn’t until he’d gotten close to Chloé that he’d thought to consider the real people—and their very real feelings—wrapped up in the whole ordeal._

_His immediate impulse was to steer the conversation away, distract her with something else, but he knew this was one time when he couldn’t do that. She likely wouldn’t be able to really relax until she’d taken care of Audrey’s Christmas gift._

_“What have you gotten her in the past?”_

_She shrugged. “What haven’t I gotten her? I’ve tried clothes, jewelry, antiques, artwork—all of the finest quality and latest trends, mind you. But the best reaction I’ve ever gotten was a—,” she turned to look at him with a flat expression, evidently imitating her mother, “‘cute.’”_

_He grimaced. “Eesh.”_

_“Yeah.” She sucked in a huge breath and let it out in a heavy sigh before continuing to walk through the flea market. “So I tried to up my game every year, getting her the best, most expensive gifts I could think of in the hopes that she would—I don’t know, love me I guess.” The bitterness in her tone alone was enough to make his heart plummet. She kept her gaze hard, unyielding, and shrugged. “I gave up a few years ago though. Now I just try to get her something that fulfills the social obligation.”_

_Nathaniel drew his cheek between his teeth as he watched her stop to vacantly inspect some jewelry. Maybe it was a product of being around her so often—or more likely from witnessing her cover up her secret identity all the time—but whatever the reason, it was nearly impossible for him to miss Chloé’s lies these days. And her supposed indifference towards the gifts she gave her mother?_

_Lie._

_“Well,” he eventually posited, “I know Maman really likes things that smell good. Candles, soaps, bubble bath, things like that.”_

_Chloé nodded and picked up a pair of earrings to more closely examine them. “That sounds like it could work,” she mumbled. “Help me keep an eye out for apple-scented things.” Then she looked up at the vendor with a much brighter expression, quickly melting back into her cheerful shopping persona. “How much for these?”_

 

Nathaniel watched as Audrey unwrapped her extravagant basket of organic, locally-made apple bath products—Chloé couldn’t do a single thing small after all. She raised a bottle of lotion to her nose and sniffed it, but showed just about no reaction whatsoever; she could absolutely love or hate it and he would never be able to tell the difference. No wonder shopping for her was so frustrating.

When he looked back at Chloé, though, he found her attention completely focused on Ryan. He followed her gaze just in time to see his eyes light up. “The new Ultimate Mecha Strike! This isn’t even out yet; how did you get it?”

“A friend of ours from school worked on it,” she explained with a wave of her hand before getting to the question that he could see was eating her alive. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah.” He was pretty sure that was the brightest grin he’d seen on Ryan’s face yet. “Thank you, Chloé.”

“Thank Nathaniel. It was his idea.”

Ryan turned his smile to him. “Thanks Nath.”

Wow, he wasn’t expecting the rush of warmth that came with one of Chloé’s cousins calling him by his nickname. “Y-You’re welcome.”

“Although, Nathaniel,” Grandma Renee chimed in, “Just so you know, you’ll be expected to bring your own gifts in the future.”

And there it was—that same piercing, testing gaze that her daughter had given him at the dinner table two nights prior. This time, however, it didn’t surprise him in the slightest. He grinned.

“I’ll remember that.”

Nathaniel proceeded to watch as Chloé moved on to unwrapping one of her gifts. Was he imagining the tiny blush that accompanied her smile?


	16. Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [IT'S LIKE.  **REALLY** GREEN.](https://youtu.be/jj_iDqnSwFQ)

“No way! I can’t even picture her crying, let alone sobbing over the phone.”

Nathaniel laughed as he meticulously constructed the next spinach puff. He was only on his third one while Jasmine had already filled up half of her muffin tin across the table.

“It doesn’t happen often, that’s for sure,” he affirmed. “Needless to say I was shocked to have her call me in absolute hysterics.”

“What was it about?”

He chuckled as he spoke. “She had just bought the house she has now, and she had hired an interior designer to paint and decorate and everything. But she—,” he interrupted himself with a laugh, “—she told them she wanted something _springy._ So her designer—I kid you not—picked out the brightest most vibrant shade of green—like we’re talking the kind of green they use for green screens in movies—and just painted the walls solid.”

Jasmine looked up, eyes wide and jaw dropped in horrific amusement. _“No.”_

He nodded, grin splitting his cheeks. “It was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. When you walked inside, the light would reflect off the walls to make your skin turn a sickly green. It was _incredible.”_

Jasmine laughed before continuing, “So she called you to fix it because you’re an artist.”

“Yep. You should have seen her when I showed up though. She had fired the designer before they furnished the place, so she was just sitting on the floor in the middle of an empty living room, curled up in a ball with pools of makeup under her eyes.”

“Oh my goodness Chloé,” she chuckled, shaking her head.

“I felt bad, but even at the time it was hard not to laugh. She had had the biggest meltdown I’d ever seen, because of _paint.”_ He shook his head, smiling at the memory of her yelling and smacking his arm while he giggled at her distress. “It was so very _Chloé.”_

“So what’d you do?”

“Gave her some dark chocolate and took her to the store to get new paints,” he shrugged. “We spent the next few weeks painting the house much calmer shades and taking care of the interior design ourselves.” A wistful smile took to his lips then. His more-than-platonic affections for her were in their infancy back then. Needless to say, getting into more than one paint fight with her and seeing her laughing with streaks of green and yellow on her cheeks was… Well, his fate was sealed. “She hasn’t been willing to trust another designer since then, even for hotel events.”

“She should have just called Georgia. I’m sure she would have happily taken the excuse to fly to Paris.”

Nathaniel looked up from his fifth spinach puff—how was Jasmine already reaching the end of her muffin tin?? “She’s an interior designer?”

“Yep,” she nodded. “One of the best in New York.”

“That explains why the house is so well decorated.”

Jasmine nodded but said nothing more, focusing on stuffing her spinach puffs. She set aside her first muffin tin and began filling up a second one. Nathaniel was on number six.

“So Aunt Georgia is an interior designer, Audrey is a fashion critic, Isabella’s in business. What about everyone else?”

“Well Marianne is a lawyer,” she looked up with a playful smirk, “so you really don’t want to get into arguments with her, trust me. Edith is a medical doctor, and Margaret is a psychologist. And then Nick is a retired master sergeant in the marines and Renee was a hospital corpsman in the navy.” He thought that would be it, but right as he was about to speak, she rolled her eyes and added, “Oh and Ryan, even though he’s only 16, is really into game design, and is working on learning how to code for that.”

“Wow,” he said, stunned. “Is it just me or is everyone in this family kind of…” he paused to search for the right word and she took the opening.

“Overly ambitious and ridiculously successful? Yeah tell me about it, I’m a kindergarten teacher.”

Something about the bitterness in her tone immediately had him stifling a laugh. She looked up and for a second he thought he was dead—she may only be related by marriage, but she was definitely Chloé’s cousin. A second later though, the fake glare melted away to a smile and she laughed with him.

“It’s kind of intimidating,” he admitted, looking down at his eighth spinach puff. “Not gonna lie, I’ve been wondering if I’m good enough for Chloé since long before coming here.”

He could already see Jasmine shaking her head in his peripherals before he was done speaking. “Don’t worry. If I know anything about Chloé, it’s that she does what she wants regardless of what others think. And she clearly loves you.”

Nathaniel smiled to himself, a storm of butterflies fluttering through his stomach, and hoped she didn’t notice the way his face was heating up. He sure wanted to believe her, and a growing part of him might even be starting to.

“I won’t lie to you though,” Jasmine continued, immediately making him nervous. “The family is definitely judging you.” He paused and looked at her with what was probably a frightened look. Having people judge him was a huge insecurity of his in general, but for it to be the family of the woman he was(n’t) dating?

She looked up and smiled, the expression only easing a bit of his tension. “Don’t worry. They judged me too.” She shrugged as she started with her next spinach puff. “Now they love me. You just have to prove yourself to them.”

“How would I—?”

“Nope,” she cut him off, shaking her head. “Can’t tell you that; otherwise you’ll fuck it up.” He pursed his lips and stared down at his spinach puff. He was still on his eighth one while she was quickly making her way through her second muffin tin. “But don’t worry,” she continued. He could feel her looking at him and raised his eyes to meet her gaze.

This time, the look she gave him made his nerves settle with his next breath out. He could definitely see how someone with that sort of presence would end up being a kindergarten teacher.

“You’re already off to a good start. Trust me.”

He huffed out a sigh and smiled. “I hope you’re right.”

Not a second later, a head popped into the doorway, blonde ponytail swinging out underneath her. “Hey Red, we’re missing some ingredients so Aunt Georgia is sending me to the store.”

He blinked at her. “Okay?” She just stared at him expectantly. A moment later he smiled and nodded his understanding. “And you want me to come with you.”

“Yes.”

Nathaniel looked at Jasmine in silent question. She leaned across the table and stole his muffin tin. “Go ahead; you’re slowing me down anyway. Besides,” she added, sending Chloé a devious smirk, “you don’t want to keep Miss Green Room waiting.”

He bit back a laugh and looked at Chloé. She stared at Jasmine for a few seconds with a blank expression before fixing a cold, lifeless glare on him.

“You’re dead.”


	17. Ginger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who has sleeping habits like mine will find this chapter awfully relatable.

“Oh, Nath, look! I found your long lost twin!”

“Chloé, if I turn around and you’re holding up a fucking tomato, I swear— Ginger. Ha. Very original.”

Chloé snickered mischievously as she set down the ginger root and he had a hard time keeping his deadpan expression in the face of that childish joy. He shook his head with a smile. “Come on, if we take too long your aunt will kill us. Can you go get some bell peppers?”

She groaned out an overdramatic sigh and trudged over to stand next to him while he went back to picking out an eggplant. “Nath, you clearly don’t understand.” She reached into his jacket pocket, fishing out the folded up shopping list they had. “I brought you here so _you_ could do the work and so _I_ could stand here and look pretty.” _Well, you’re certainly succeeding at that,_ he thought. He side eyed her to sneak another look at that deep maroon shade painting her lips. It matched her turtleneck sweater perfectly and he was still having trouble getting over the fact that she had managed to look beautiful, sexy, and _wholesome_ all at the same time.

Those heart-stopping lips turned down in a frown. “She didn’t specify what kind of bell peppers she wanted.”

Nathaniel leaned in to look at the list over her shoulder as he dropped the eggplant in the basket on his arm. “Yellow would probably go best with the recipe.”

She shrugged and stalked off toward the peppers. “Whatever you say. You’re the cooking genius.”

He scoffed as he followed after her. “I think we both know that I am light years away from being any kind of cooking genius.”

“Oh that’s right, how could I forget? You once poisoned me.”

“Hey now, that’s an overreaction.”

 _“Poison,”_ she sighed theatrically. _“My tongue may never work right again. How will I ever trust your cooking in the future?”_

He watched her with an amused smirk, one eyebrow cocked as he reached above her head to grab one of the produce bags. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re an attempted murderer.”

Holding her challenging blue gaze in one of their informal staring contests, he reached for her hand and placed the bag in it. “Pick out two peppers.”

Her overdramatic groan carried after him as he walked over to the carrots. “Naaaaaath.”

“Keep this up and I won’t make chocolate chip cookies for you anymore.” The gasp she emitted had him looking over at her again. Chloé wore an expression of utter blaspheme as she approached, bag of bell peppers hanging from her fist.

“First attempted murder and now you’re _threatening_ me?”

He rolled his eyes and grabbed a bag of carrots, placing it in the basket just as she unceremoniously dropped in the peppers. He snatched the list out of her other hand and like the fully grown adult that she was, she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Going from too little sleep to too much really messed with you, huh?” he chuckled, eyes scanning through the items.

“Seriously, I don’t know how you exist like this. I simultaneously feel like I have all the energy in the world and like I might pass out any second. The world seems like it’s way too in focus, and if I hold my head wrong, it starts swimming. It’s disorienting.”

He nodded as he began walking her along the aisles, all too familiar with the sensations she desribed. “Yeah, all the coffee you drank this morning is definitely not helping that.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?” she whined. He tried not to blush, warmth blooming in his chest as she dropped her head on his shoulder. She leaned heavily on his side and shuffled her feet like a zombie as they moved forward.

“I tried,” he laughed. “You threatened to pour hot coffee on me in retaliation.” Her only response was to giggle sadistically. “Sometimes I think you’re a greater threat to my life than akumas.”

“You’re probably right.” She stood up straight again with a deep breath. “What do we need in this aisle?”

 _“Your_ long lost twin.”

“What?” Chloé’s brows knit together in confusion. Then she watched as he reached for a bottle of honey. When he chanced meeting her gaze again, her expression could only be described as thoroughly unimpressed.

“I hate you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She's really going to kill him one of these days if he keeps this up. Doesn't he realize how many chapters are ending in spiteful words?


	18. Winter Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rare Pair Month Day 2: Winter Night

Nathaniel stirred to the gentle press of soft lips to his. He was swimming in blue—blue eyes much too beautiful to belong to any mortal creature—and all he knew was _her_ and her lips and her kiss smooth like honey but sweet like the strawberry lip gloss she painted herself with.

“Chloé?”

The whisper escaped his mouth on a quiet breath, slipping through the space between kisses.

“I’m not Chloé.”

The ethereal voice that echoed through his mind was familiar—a voice so very closely resembling one that he loved, adored—but it was right. It wasn’t _hers._

“Who are you?”

The words carried on the electric pulse that ran from his fingertips to her cheek, dancing along the leisurely caress of soft skin. Then he was lost again, lost in blue eyes as deep as the sea and as bright as the sky as they eased their way into his soul, down to his core, until she found the very center of his being and released her words in a flurry of butterflies beating their wings up through his heart.

“The ghost of Christmas future.”

A mischievous giggling pulled Nathaniel from his dream and he slowly opened his eyes to the soft light of Aunt Georgia’s living room, illuminated only by the tree on the far wall. He blinked groggily as the forms of Isabella and Jasmine came into focus in front of him, the former holding up her phone as if…

“Why are you taking a picture?” he asked sleepily, raising a hand to rub his eyes.

“Because this will make a great Christmas card next year.”

He stared at them in confusion for a few seconds, attention only drawn away by movement at his side. Chloé rubbed her head into his shoulder with a soft whine before lying still again, breathing deep and steady in the comfortable hold of sleep. Without thinking about it, he reached out and tucked a stray hair back behind her ear, a warm smile taking to his lips as she turned her cheek to meet his touch.

“You two fell asleep during A Christmas Carol,” Jasmine whispered. “You’re not the only ones.” When he looked up she was smiling fondly at the couch over to the right. He followed her gaze to see Marianne curled up with her head resting on the arm of the couch and Ryan on the floor still sitting up against the base of the couch, both completely checked out.

“It’s honestly part of the tradition by now,” Isabella sighed.

Earlier that morning, he had assumed she meant going to bed at the end of the night, but now Nathaniel wondered if this was what Chloé was talking about when she had said _‘watch A Christmas Carol and pass out.’_

He turned to the woman at his side and gently squeezed her shoulder. “Come on, Chloé, let’s go to bed.”  She groaned softly and pressed her face into his shoulder. He chuckled. “We both know the bed is more comfortable than my arm.”

“Mm-mm,” she negated, rubbing her forehead against him as she shook her head.

“Isabella already got a picture of you sleeping; do you want her to get more?”

“Actually I already got three.”

Chloé frowned and peeked an eye open to glare at her cousin. He heard the telltale click of another picture being taken and more of the same snickering that had woken him up.

With a tired groan, Chloé stood, taking his hand with her. “Night bitches, see you tomorrow.”

Both laughed and chimed their goodnight’s as she lead him away and up the stairs.

“Turn around,” she mumbled quietly as soon as he closed the bedroom door behind them. She was just beginning to lift the hem of her sweater when he did as he was told, pulling out his own sleeping clothes to change as well. Then the light was off and they were both slipping under the cool sheets of the bed.

Sleep was very quickly seeping back into him, its tendrils snaking their way down to his bones and into his core. Without thinking about it, he wrapped his arm around Chloé’s waist and pulled her close. She let out a contented sigh and melted into him, back folding into his chest and cold toes meeting warm feet with perfect ease.

A winter night had never been so warm as it was curled up under the blankets with _her._


	19. Limbo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This definitely isn't based on an actual Hallmark Christmas Movie I have no idea what you're talking about.

December 26th was what Chloé referred to as “limbo.”

With Christmas finally done and settled and New Year’s Eve right around the corner, Aunt Georgia (and by extension, everyone else) only had a brief moment to breathe before the rush was on to prepare for The Party™.

“Tomorrow, Aunt Georgia will start preparations for her big New Year’s Party,” Chloé had explained to him that morning. “Over the next few days, she will be bustling about 24/7 and will slowly require more and more of our help. But today, December 26th, is the one day that she _will not_ do anything. At approximately 9 am, you can expect to see her sit down on the couch and turn on the Hallmark channel. Then, until roughly 9 pm, she will not move except to eat and go to the bathroom.”

“So what does everyone else do?”

A shrug, and then, “We are in limbo.”

Thus the circumstances under which Nathaniel now found himself actually somewhat invested in his second Hallmark movie of the day.

He sat on the couch perpendicular to the TV, leaning back against the arm with his legs out in front of him. Chloé sat nestled between his legs, her back to his chest, paying half attention to the movie while she scrolled through various social media platforms on her phone. Every once in a while she would hold up her phone to show him something—memes, fanart from animes they shared, etc. Meanwhile he kept up a steady rhythm of combing his fingers through her hair.

Initially, he’d had his arms crossed in front of her chest in an easy hug, but over time he’d gotten more restless. His hands had started gently running along her arms eventually, and at one point as his left hand had reached her wrist, she had held her hand up to take his, still just scrolling through twitter with her right. So he’d twined his fingers through hers, untangled them, rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, etc., just mindlessly playing with her hand. Eventually that turned into him using both of his hands to massage hers. She had put down the phone and leaned back against him then and he would give anything to have seen her expression in that moment.

She of course insisted he massage the other hand, so he did, and after about ten minutes of that, he moved on to her arms. He gently squeezed along her muscles, ~~definitely not thinking about how sexy her toned arms were~~ , slowly making his way up to her shoulders. And it was as he smoothed his thumbs along the backs of her shoulders that he heard the first contented sigh.

Oh what he would give to hear _that_ a million times.

Eventually his massage had taken him up along her neck and to the base of her head, and it was there that she had reached up and pulled out her hair tie. In all the time he had known her, never had he seen Chloé take her hair out of its ponytail except to go to bed at night. Yet here she was, letting her hair down in the middle of the day, so that he could…what? Massage her head?

“Braid my hair,” she whispered. Then he had laughed.

“I don’t think you want me to.” Her only response was to lean her head back to look up at him with a pouty face. He had wanted to kiss her nose. He almost did, before remembering that she _still_ was not actually his girlfriend. Still, he smiled. “Alright, I’ll braid it but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He had to stop the first braid half way through because he managed to mix up which section was which enough times that it started to un-braid instead. The next one went a little better, but got all fucked up because loose strands of hair kept tangling into it all over the place and getting in his way. That was when Chloé pulled up a step-by-step tutorial of some semi-complicated braid on her phone and made him try it. It went a lot better than he expected—he was pretty alright when he had instructions with pictures in front of him—but that’s really not saying much.

Soon, though, he realized she didn’t actually want her hair braided; she just liked having her hair touched. So he took to using his fingers to brush out the tangles he’d made, and then once that was done, just found a rhythm of running his fingers through her hair. She seemed content with that, and thus they carried on into the second movie.

They were now at the part where the main love interests were leaning in for a kiss. But they were only an hour into the movie, so inevitably, a friend ran up and interrupted them. The look on her face was that of complete obliviousness—as if someone could really walk up to two people whose eyes were closed and faces two centimeters apart and _not_ realize what was happening. But such was the way, and Main Female Protagonist got dragged away, casting a regretful look over her shoulder at Main Male Protagonist.

Then began The Big Drama, where Main Male Protagonist’s secret got revealed—something about him having been the one to fire a bunch of doctors or something—and Main Female Protagonist got mad.

Main Female Protagonist was in the middle of crying about how she’d gotten close to Main Male Protagonist when Chloé leaned back to say something. She dropped her voice below even the whisper they had been using until then, and spoke in French. “Hey, Nath?”

“Yeah, Chloé?” he replied, leaning forward so his ear was closer to her mouth.

“Remember how you said we were being tropy with the fake dating thing? Like a hallmark movie?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s skip the part of the movie where the protagonists are turned against each other. Deal?”

He huffed a tiny laugh, “Deal,” and went back to playing with her hair.

It wasn’t until the camera was slowly panning out from the main protagonists making out in the middle of a Christmas festival that he realized.

_Does that mean we’re not skipping the part where we fall in love by the end?_


	20. In Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rare Pair Month Day 5: In Denial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Alcohol consumption

Checking over everything one last time—he was sure there was still at least one typo still in there—Nathaniel finally uploaded the new chapter online and shut his laptop. Finding time to work on his comic since coming here had been near impossible, but thankfully the lull of December 26th had finally allowed him enough space to pump out that week’s chapter. Now he could put it away and stop worrying about it until he was back in France.

As his laptop screen shut off, Nathaniel was suddenly plunged into unexpected darkness. When he had started, it was still well within daylight hours. He hadn’t even noticed the sun going down.

…When was the last time he ate?

Nathaniel could hear the TV playing another Christmas movie as he made his way downstairs, so even before he pulled his phone out of his pocket, he knew it couldn’t be later than 9. _8:43._ Okay, so at least he only missed one meal this time. Not the worst he’d done.

“I think you’re just in denial.”

“What??”

“Seconded.”

As he rounded the corner into the kitchen, the voices of Chloé, Isabella, and Marianne progressively got louder.

“Aren’t you two even listening?” Isabella complained. “He isn’t even _that_ cute.”

“But he _is_ cute,” Chloé fired back.

“And you spend practically all of your free time with him,” Marianne continued.

“I do not!”

“But he _is_ the one you’ve been texting nonstop, isn’t he?”

From the window in the kitchen wall, Nathaniel could see the three of them sitting at the far end of the dining room table snacking on cheese, crackers, and chocolate as they made their way through the first of several bottles of wine sitting on the table next to them. Chloé’s hair was still down around her shoulders and her smile as she teased her cousin was infectious, eyes practically sparkling with joy.

“Yeah, but not about anything important! Just random mundane life shit.”

“Izzy, that only hurts your case even more,” her sister rebuked.

“Yep,” Chloé agreed. “You two are definitely dating.”

Isabella slumped down, forehead thumping on the table. _“Oh my god we’re dating,”_ she whined miserably. The other two burst into bubbling laughter.

Nathaniel smiled. He could see that light pink tone in Chloé’s cheeks that she got when she’d been laughing steadily over an extended period of time. It probably had to do with the wine, but she looked so much more comfortable and unrestrictedly _happy_ than she had nearly the entire trip. Seeing her so freely laughing with her cousins… It was beautiful.

“Ah I see tonight is wine night.” Nathaniel nearly jumped out of his skin as Jasmine suddenly materialized behind him, watching over his shoulder. She chuckled as he turned to her. “Wow, you spook easily. I’ll have to remember that.”

He gave her a brief glare before turning back to the window. “So they do this often?”

She nodded. “Every year since Chloé turned 21. I don’t think they even mean for it to happen, but they always find the wine left over from Christmas dinner and stay up all night drinking and catching up.”

He had lost track of the conversation, but evidently it was Chloé they were embarrassing now because her face was lighting up in increasingly deep shades of red he hadn’t even seen on her before.

“You say ‘they.’ You don’t join them?”

Jasmine shrugged. “Nah. I see it as a cousin bonding thing and don’t want to interrupt.”

“What are we looking at?” Nathaniel only jumped a little bit this time (but still jumped, to his dismay and Jasmine’s delight) as Margaret stepped up behind them. “Ahh I see the tradition has passed down.”

“The others too?” Jasmine asked.

“Yep. Edith and her sisters stay up gossiping over wine once every year.”

“Must be some sort of family thing,” he mused.

Margaret stepped away to start looking through the cabinet and he and Jasmine followed suit a moment later, leaving the cousins to giggle in peace.

“I think it’s because it’s the only time they ever really get to catch up,” she said, pulling out a bag of pretzels. “This whole family is so distant, not just emotionally but physically as well with Chloé in France, Audrey away in the city, you two,” she pointed at Jasmine, “down in DC, Isabella wherever work takes her, and Edith, Ryan and I over in California. With everyone busy with work all the time, they hardly ever talk to each other outside of this house. So they have to make up for it all in one night.”

Jasmine pulled some of last night’s leftovers out of the fridge. “Not to mention that without any alcohol in their system, they all suck at communicating in general.”

He laughed. “So it’s not just Chloé?”

 _“No,”_ the other two said in unison.

“If anything,” Margaret continued, “Chloé’s explosive nature makes her one of the better communicators in the family. It may not be constructive, but at least she gets her feelings out at all.” He grimaced, making her nod in response. “Yeah, no kidding.”

“Want some?” Jasmine asked him, holding out the tub of leftovers after scooping some onto a plate for herself. “I’m guessing you skipped dinner too.”

He smiled and took it. “Thanks.”

Margaret chomped down on a pretzel and shook her head. “Every year.”

“Yep,” Jasmine replied, starting up the microwave. “That’s Limbo for you.”


End file.
